


make them stay, make them stone

by bullroars



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Curses, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Graphic Description, Immortality, M/M, Magic, Mild Kink, Mild Language, Multi, OT3, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Spies & Secret Agents, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-11 18:15:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5636968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bullroars/pseuds/bullroars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Though, really, what’s he supposed to say?  “Darlings, when I was born Henry the Sixth was the King of England and dying like a normal human keeps slipping my mind?” </p><p>(or, napoleon solo can't die.  this tends to complicate relationships.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. stay

**Author's Note:**

> part iii of my "get all your outstanding projects finished by the 31st" thing; inspired by a prompt on the kink meme that i have long since lost. i know very little about fae/faeries from russian and german folklore, so the ones i will eventually describe--not that they're a huge part of this story--are mainly gaelic in origin. 
> 
> thanks for the many years of faerie-inspired nightmares, grandma. 
> 
> the second half of this is nearly done! i'm just impatient lol

childhood dotted with bodies.   
let them go. let them   
be ghosts.  
  
no, i said,   
make them stay,  make them stone.  
  
  
"origin of the marble forest," gregory orr

 

 

make them stay, make them stone 

 

In his defense, it’s not his fault.  Napoleon’s been known to dip his fingers into married pies before, of course, and anyway Gaby and Illya aren’t married, but he’s not a complete asshole who goes around breaking up happy relationships and besides.  It’s been a long, long time since he’s liked anyone as much as he likes them.  Affection is not something that comes easily to him—it left him some time back in 1820, he thinks, along with his caution and his sense of shame—and he doesn’t want to spoil it.  He caught Gaby and Illya together once and promised himself he’d never get between them.  It was very noble of him, he thinks.   

Of course, _nobility_ is one of those complex, abstract things that leeched out of him centuries ago, and Gaby and Illya _asked._ It’s not his fault if they approached him.   

Settled in bed with them, one leg tangled with Illya’s and Gaby pressed flush against his chest, Napoleon can’t bring himself to much regret saying yes.  He’s never been good at impulse control.   

It’s what got him here in the first place.  

He’s sure that he’s cold and not especially comfortable to curl up with, but neither of his partners are complaining.  His ability to sense temperature is another one of those things that’s long gone—he’s only got so many sluggish neurons to spare, unfortunately—but he’s sure Gaby and Illya are wonderfully warm, nubile young things that they are, and he hums appreciatively when Illya curls a hand around his back.   

“Cowboy?”  he says, sleepy-thick.  “You good?” 

Napoleon grins lazily and tries not to look too much like the proverbial cat that ate the canary.  “I am,” he purrs, stretching into Illya’s hand.  “You?”  He can’t make out the exact shade of Illya’s eyes in the dark, and for a second he’s afraid.  (Not surprising; that’s an old, old emotion, fear.  Napoleon’s been losing things by degrees for a long, long time, but fear, he thinks, will stay with him until his blood ossifies and his clever hands turn to stone.) 

He doesn’t know, now, if he could survive going back to being just… coworkers.  He’s got a grip on Gaby and Illya now, he’s afraid.  Getting attached is such a long and slow-moving process that letting go is nearly impossible.  His fingers lock up.  His legs refuse to run.   It's his downfall, he supposes.   

But then Illya’s eyes shine possessively and his hand curls around Napoleon’s hip, and he says, “Yes, very good.”  

Between them Gaby stirs, shifting her weight until she’s pressed firmly between them.  “Hush,” she mumbles.  Her hair smells like wildflowers and Parisian nights, wine and coffee and motor oil. Rain on stones, he thinks.  Something wakes up in Napoleon’s chest and twists, a sharp, near pain.   

“Go back to sleep,” she says, and tucks her nose under Illya’s collarbone.  “Smug assholes.”  

Illya huffs a fond laugh and curls around them both a little tighter.  The thing in Napoleon’s mausoleum of a chest twists again.   

 _Well,_ he thinks, _this is new._  

* * *

 It would probably be better if they didn’t work as well together as they do.  Gaby’s heard of people forming arrangements like this one, but she’s never heard of one that lasts for more than a few nights, let alone weeks and months.  Two women sharing a man tend to get competitive, she’s heard, and two men sharing a woman tend to get jealous.   

But Napoleon and Illya complement each other well, and neither seems to mind sharing her with the other.  (Or, for that matter, each other without her.)  They all seem to _fit._ Gaby and Illya just—work. She annoys Illya, sometimes, and sometimes he drives her up the wall, but he’s sweet, she thinks, and loyal, far smarter than anyone gives him credit for, and rather good with his mouth. It’s easy to be with Illya.   

It’s also easier to be with Napoleon than she would have thought.  He is not Illya, not even close, but he fits with Gaby just as well.  He’s clever and funny and worldly.  He likes to take Gaby places, likes to show her things.  It’s _nice._ Good.  She is beyond lucky to have found not one man who understands her but two, and for those men to enjoy each other as much as they enjoy her.  She has no reason to be distrustful, or worried.   

But honestly, it’s a little weird.  A good weird, but weird.  Gaby can’t put her finger on it.  She hasn’t had much experience with this sort of thing, and not a lot of time to think on it anyway.  She and Illya invited Napoleon into their bed in Prague, and since then they’ve been to Shanghai, to Brussels, to Rio de Janeiro and now to Barcelona all within a few months chasing down the last of the Vinciguerras' people.  Gaby’s barely had time to sleep, let alone nitpick her new lover’s quirks.   

“Thinking again?”  Illya looks up from his chessboard to shoot Gaby a curious glance.  A frankly adorable crease appears between his eyebrows.   

Gaby only shrugs.  In Rio she found a set of schematics for the newest cutting-edge racecar engine that she’s been meaning to read, but she can’t focus.   

“Have you noticed how _cold_ he is?”  she finally says.  It’s been bothering her all day.  She'd buried Napoleon under every blanket she could find at the hotel and he had still felt like he was carved from stone all night, cool to the touch and utterly unable to warm up.  It didn’t bother him at all, of course—Gaby is starting to think that nothing can bother Napoleon—but sleeping with an icicle is not fun.   

Illya laughs.  “I think you are thinking too much,” he says.  “Cowboy is warm enough for me.” 

Gaby raises an eyebrow, and sure enough Illya reddens.  He’s cute that way.  “Are you suggesting that I’m not trying hard enough?”  she says sweetly, and Illya turns even redder.  By now he’s gotten pretty good at telling when she’s teasing him, though, so his face clears after a minute.   

“Do not worry,” he says.  “Solo is fine.  Perhaps strange, but he is soldier, and spy.  All the good ones go strange after a while.” 

“That’s reassuring,” Gaby mutters.  She wants to believe Illya.  She _should_ believe Illya.  He would know more about the strangeness of spies than she.  And Napoleon’s not _that_ weird.  He’s just.   

Very old, it seems.  Gaby only sees it rarely, because on the job Napoleon is alive, a dancing, thieving hurricane of quick fingers and a honey tongue, weaving his way in and out of trouble with an energy Gaby could probably kill him for.   

And in bed he laughs often.  He smiles.  He hums and even sings, sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly charitable and brings Gaby and Illya dinner in bed.   

But in the mornings, or in between missions, everything about him is slow-moving and careful, like he is fragile, like all of his blood has slowed to a crawl and his thoughts, his clever hands, have slowed along with it.   

Gaby’s never seen anything like it before.  And god help her, she’s curious.  It’s a flaw, really.  She gets it from her father.  Always poking her nose into everything.  It’s a good trait for a spy, she thinks.  Maybe not the best trait for a lover, but, well.   

Illya studies her face and sighs.  “This is really bothering you,” he says.  “You are worried.”  

She shrugs with one shoulder.  It’s a shameful thing to admit—Napoleon’s a grown man, they’re not married, this is silly and childish—but Gaby doesn’t care.  She’s curious.  She’s worried.  It is what it is.   

Illya, to his credit, doesn’t ask if she’s worried Napoleon is hiding something from them.  He trusts the American more than Gaby trusts anyone.  (Old habits.)  

“I will look into it,” he says gruffly.  “I know man, a doctor.  He treated many in my unit.  Is good man, very discreet.  Could tell us something about Cowboy’s, how you say, _quirks_.”   

Gaby grins.  “Thank you,” she says, relieved.  “What can I do to make it up to you?” 

“When Cowboy finds out, lie.  I have feeling he will not be happy,” Illya says, but he’s smiling.  God, Gaby loves him.  “I think it is your turn to have your identity stolen, no?” 

“You think Napoleon could be me convincingly?”  Gaby asks, mischievous now, setting her schematics aside.  The last time Illya fucked her over a coffee table, he'd lost half of his favorite chess set under various bits of furniture.  Illya told her later, crawling around on the floor, that he didn’t mind.   

“No one could even come close,” Illya says, opening his hands so Gaby can sit in his lap, throw her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and grind down into him.  Illya hardens against her thighs, sending a warm jolt of pleasure and pride up her spine.   

“No,” she agrees, nipping at Illya’s throat.  He slides a hand under her skirt and up her thigh, teasing her clit for a moment before sliding a finger into her cunt, still wet and open from this morning, easily.  She gasps appreciatively, rolling her hips.  “I think he’s got the better ass, though.” 

Illya laughs and it sounds like a growl.  He pulls his finger out of her and sweeps an arm across the table, sending board and pieces scattering.  “I don’t think so,” he says, and bears her down.  

* * *

The older he gets, the less complex his emotions become.  This is probably for the best, especially given his current situation.  A hundred years ago, he would have been obligated to challenge Sanders to a duel and kill him to preserve his own honor, but after that thing in '69 with the Spanish princess, Napoleon Solo doesn't really have the capacity to feel humiliation anymore.   

Anger, sure.  Happiness.  Pleasure.  Grief, still, he thinks, but anything more 

complex is fading away.  He's never jealous anymore, never ashamed, never guilty or remorseful or awestruck or pensive.   

It's a weird side effect of not dying.  (He doesn’t like the world _immortal--_ it has too much mystery and awe around it, and there's nothing particularly mysterious about his situation.  He just doesn't die.)  If he knew anyone else his age, he'd ask, but the oldest person beside himself that he's ever known was one hundred and twenty-nine years old, and he's four times that age by now.   

Whatever the case, his lack of emotional complexity makes his job easier, and his uncanny ability to survive bullet wounds and stabbings and, once, a small-scale nuclear explosion, means that he's going to survive the CIA and Sanders and the whole damn Cold War.  Maybe he'll outlast America, Russia, modern society as the world knows it.  He'd miss fine art and fine women and fine crepes, but _worry_ is beyond him now, too.  He doesn't care about the future.   

Or, at least, he didn’t. 

Napoleon’s been in love before.  Of course he has been—he’s pushing five hundred and fifty, and he’s never been in the habit of denying himself pleasure, or companionship, or happiness.   

It’s just been a long time, is all.  And he’s out of practice, and unsure if he’s feeling what he’s feeling.  It’s distracting.  He should be working.   

Napoleon Solo takes pride in his work.  It’s about the only thing he’s got left that can stave off the creeping boredom—and god, he can’t _wait_ to stop feeling boredom—and he does like being a spy, even if Sanders gets on his nerves.  He’s never been a spy before.  A soldier, sure.  A doctor, a lawyer, a merchant of several trades.  A painter once, a thief always.  But never a spy.  He’s got at it, too.  Illya likes to tell him that he’s a terrible spy, but he’s just jealous.  Napoleon’s not _subtle,_ sure, but he’s a good agent.  He’s observant.  He’s good at reading people.  He knows when he’s being lied to or when something is off.   

Like now.   

The mortals are up to something.  Both of them are excellent spies and very, very good at sneaking around, but they're children, really, and the last time Napoleon Solo turned his back on his partner, he ended up in a CIA holding cell, so he's been paying extra attention to his new friends.   

And they're most definitely up to something.   

He wouldn't care, usually.  Life is complex and people are complex and it is perfectly possible to multitask.  He does it all the time.  He's inclined to let Gaby and Illya continue sneaking around, so long as it doesn't blow up in his face—while Napoleon's ability to heal from injuries is unprecedented, it's never fun to get shot or stabbed or blown up—but something about the looks they give him when they think he's not looking sets his teeth on edge.   

He thinks it’s because he’s in love with them.   

The last time he was in love with somebody, it was 1722 and he caught a cannonball to the chest over it.  By the time he dragged himself up from the seafloor a week later, still missing three ribs and half a lung, he wasn’t in love anymore and assumed that he’d lost it like he loses everything else.  He’s been _fond_ of people since then, sure.  Affectionate, even.  But not in love, and it’s messing him up now.  

 _Focus,_ Napoleon tells himself, blinking away the film of memories.  _You’re working._ Marco Batista, one of the Vinciguerras’ last enforcers, takes another sip of _café_ across the street.  He’d given UNCLE the slip in his native Cuba, slid past Napoleon and his partners in Rio, and has a clear exit route from here to somewhere in Eastern Europe should he spook and make a break for it.  A nasty character, all things considered, but Napoleon can’t really bring himself to pay attention to the task at hand.   

 _What are they up to?_ Napoleon’s not the type of man to insist that his lovers suspend all their other activities when they’re with him. He doesn’t really care that they have more in their lives.  But he dislikes secrets.  It’s hypocritical of him, he knows. (Though, really, what’s he supposed to say?  “Darlings, when I was born Henry the Sixth was the King of England and dying like a normal human keeps slipping my mind?”)   

He’s inclined to give Gaby and Illya the benefit of the doubt.  He trusts them.  He doesn’t want to look too closely at _why,_ but he trusts them.  He does.   

All the sneaking around is driving him crazy, though.  Napoleon knows when he’s being lied to, when he’s being tricked.  The fact that it’s Gaby and Illya trying to trick him makes him—hurt, somewhere deep down below his ribs.    

Napoleon shakes himself, irritated, like the movement will scatter his feelings into the warm Barcelona air and give him his focus back.  It doesn’t. 

Getting attached was such a bad idea.  He should know better.  He _does_ know better.  He has hundreds of years of reasons to know better.  Attachment leads to pain every time, and pain is something he doesn’t think his tired network of nerves and blood vessels will give up until the very end.  

(Whatever that ending is, he doesn’t know.  He can’t die, but his body gets colder every decade, slower, more like a stone.  Perhaps one day in another handful of centuries, he’ll have moss between his fingers and marble for eyes.  The wind will wear him down to nothing and that will be the end of Napoleon Solo. 

He wouldn’t mind.) 

So, really, whatever happens next is his own fault.  He’s the one who let himself get attached, get fond, get—well.  Whatever.  And if Gaby and Illya are suspicious of him, it’s not his problem.  Either they’ll find out or they won’t.  He can’t change that.  It’s out of his hands.  In the wind.   

“Who are you kidding?”  he mutters to himself, annoyed.  Like he’s going to be able to just sit back and let his partners run around, sticking their noses into things they don’t understand.  At this point, it’s just a matter of how much he’s going to interfere.  They can’t find out about his… condition, that much is obvious, and he won’t have them running around half-cocked into fae lands.  If there are any.  He should check.  It’s been a while.   

If Napoleon can convince Gaby and Illya that there’s nothing strange about him, then he can keep them for longer, and— 

He happens to look down across the street after his target, and finds that Mr. Batista is gone.   

 _Fuck._ He springs up and heads after him, buttoning his suit jacket and sweeping his hair back up off his face.  _You’re getting slow, old man.  That’s not going to help anyone, now is it?_  

* * *

 “How did Batista get all the way to the port?”  Illya asks, confused.  He can’t hear Cowboy shrug over the phone, but he can feel it.  The last time Illya was on surveillance, Batista stayed in the Gothic Quarter among ancient churches and tiny restaurants. He didn’t go anywhere near the sea.  

“No idea,” Solo says blithely.  “He doesn’t look like he’s trying to make his getaway, though.  I think he’s collecting protection money.” 

“Protection money?” Illya frowns.  Either Batista controlled more of the Vinciguerras’ empire than their intel led them to believe, or Batista is expanding.  Illya doesn’t like either option much.   

“I’m going to stay on him,” Solo says.  “Catch up with you and Gabs later?” 

“We will be here,” Illya says.  “Be careful, yes?”  In Rio, Solo got himself caught and tortured again.  Gaby and Illya got to him before the worst could begin, but still.  (Illya despairs.  The man has scotch where his caution should be.) 

“I’ve got the tracker if I’m not,” Solo says, laughing, and hangs up.   

Illya puts the phone down and breathes through his nose.  “Reckless bastard,” he mutters, then shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and trudges back up the street to their hotel.   

He likes Barcelona.  It’s a warm, colorful place, and while the bustle and pulse of cities usually makes Illya feel like his bones are bursting out of his skin, Barcelona’s crooked buildings and bright colors make the closeness bearable.   

Their hotel is not far from the famous _Parque de Guell,_ with its storybook towers and mosaic beasts, its stones sun-warm and well-trod.  Gaby has spent the last several days reading in the sun when she’s not on Batista, but today she’s chosen to stay inside.   

Illya sighs.  She’s still reading the psychology book, then.   

A few days ago, Gaby had managed to procure several texts, among them the American _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,_ which she has been pouring over ever since, trying to explain away Cowboy’s oddities.   

Personally, Illya is concerned too—after Gaby had pointed out some of Solo’s more unusual behaviors, such as his utter lack of caution, his periods of black mood, his vices, his sometimes-slow way of moving and speaking, he couldn’t help but worry.   

Theirs is not an easy job. They live in constant danger, always moving, always fighting, always lying.  Illya has seen the stress of the job break more than one man, and Cowboy is not a spy by choice.  He is vulnerable.   

Despite this, Illya is wary of prying.  Even lovers should have some secrets.  If Solo has not told them by now, after a few months of sharing their bed, he has a good reason.  Illya has his own share of secrets that he will not part with; he thinks that perhaps they should let Solo keep his.   

But Gaby will not be deterred, and Illya loves her, so he’s not going to let her walk into a minefield all on her own.   

He nods politely to the desk clerk and makes his way upstairs.  He and Gaby are once again playing married, and she’s sprawled across her bed wearing nothing but a pair of panties and one of Cowboy’s dress shirts, which makes lust flare up in Illya’s belly and his cock harden in his pants.   

She’s got her nose buried in that damned book, though, which turns Illya’s thoughts aside rather effectively.   

“Do you think he’s got shell shock?”  Gaby says without preamble, not even bothering to look up.   

Illya toes off his shoes and frowns.  “Could be,” he says slowly, thinking hard.  He had been a boy when the Second World War broke out, too young and too scrawny to enlist convincingly, but in his father’s apartment building there had been dozens of young men who could and did go to war.   

Some of those men returned perfectly sane.   Others did not return at all.  And some had returned in body but not in mind, their thoughts still trapped on the battlefield, their eyes unseeing, their hearts lost to their friends and families.   

Solo is not like that.  He is distant sometimes, perhaps, but he does not have nightmares, does not mistake Gaby’s perfume for a grenade or Illya’s size for a threat.   

“Symptoms,” Gaby reads.  “Paranoia, excessive fatigue of thought and body, hypervigilance, insomnia, depression.  In some cases, patient may have difficulty recognizing people or places.  Patients are often prone to mood swings.”   

“That is not Cowboy,” Illya says, shaking his head.  “The insomnia, perhaps, or the fatigue, but Cowboy knows us.  He does not forget when and where he is.”   

“You’re right,” Gaby agrees, closing the book in frustration and tossing it onto the coffee table, where half a dozen similar books sit.  “Nothing fits.  He has some symptoms of things, but none of the others.  It doesn’t make sense.”  

Illya shrugs.  “People are complicated,” he says dryly, and joins her on the bed.  “They are not machines, Chop Shop.  You cannot _fix_ them.”  Plenty of people have tried to fix Illya and none of them have been successful.  He is what he is.   

Gaby snorts.  “You think I don’t know that?”  she says.  “I just—I just want to know.”  

Illya makes a non-committal noise and lets Gaby curl up against his side.   

“I want him to know that whatever it is, it’s okay.  We don’t—I don’t—care.  Whatever it is he’s hiding from us, I don’t care.”  Gaby pauses.  “Well, so long as he’s not a Nazi.  Then I’d have to shoot him.”  

“Waverly would be devastated,” Illya murmurs.   

“Why would I be devastated, Agent Kuryakin?” 

Gaby yelps and dives of the edge of the bed, pulling Cowboy’s shirt lower to cover herself.  Illya leaps to his feet and draws his gun, leveling at the intruder before he realizes what’s happening.   

Alexander Waverly, room key in hand, raises his eyebrows, unimpressed.  “You’re slipping,” he chides.  “You didn’t hear me come in?” 

“A more polite person would knock,” Gaby says, emerging from the floor with a pair of Illya’s trousers hitched up around her waist.   

Waverly, the picture of politeness, smiles.  “My apologies. Though, really, you two.  I know you’re in Spain, but is a siesta really appropriate?  Where’s Batista?” 

“Agent Solo is on him,” Illya says, holstering his weapon and spreading his stance, falling in to give his report.  “Batista is at the harbor.  Agent Solo believes he is collecting protection money.” 

“Really?  That’s troubling,” Waverly says, not looking particularly troubled.  “Well, it’s Section Three’s problem now anyway.  You’re being reassigned.”  

“What?” Gaby says, with her usual lack of subordination.  “Why?  We’ve been after Batista for almost two months.”  

“A threat has been made against your lives,” Waverly says.  “Against Agent Solo in particular, though you two were mentioned.  It’s serious enough that we’re moving you out of the country.”   

“Who made this threat?”  Illya growls.  “We will find them.” 

“Unclear, though my Circus contacts suggest it’s a Vinciguerra sympathizer, perhaps even Batista himself, looking to carry out Victoria’s last promise.”  

“How do people even know about that?”  Gaby demands, at the same time as Illya says, “What about Solo’s family?” 

“Word travels fast in Nazi circles, apparently.”  Waverly looks at Illya.  “Agent Solo has no living family, Agent Kuryakin.  You two are, as far as we can tell, the only two living people whose deaths would cause him pain.  So, as a precaution, we’re moving all of you.” 

“Where?”  Illya asks, before Gaby can start interrogating their handler about Cowboy’s family.  (Waverly would probably tell her, too.  Gaby is his favorite agent.  They all know that he’s grooming her to be his replacement.)  

“Paris, for now,” says Waverly.  “We’ll hash out the rest later.  Pack your things.  I’ve sent Simmons out after Solo.  You leave in an hour.”  

“Sir,” Illya says, mind whirling.  He has contacts in Paris.  He could find out who would dare threaten his lovers, and then— 

“Oh, and one more thing.”  Waverly crosses the room to examine Gaby’s stack of dubiously-obtained books; the _DSM,_ a book on shell shock, several pamphlets.  He picks up an old book with _Encylopedia of European Folklore_ stamped across the cover in peeling silver leaf.  “Do try and focus on the task at hand.  Inattention gets agents killed, and I despise the paperwork involved.”   

Properly chastised, Illya ducks his head.  “Sir,” he says.  Even Gaby looks away, embarrassed to be caught.   

“Leave Agent Solo alone,” Waverly instructs.  It’s no use asking him how he knows what they’re doing; Waverly knows everything.  “He’s a good agent.  I’d hate to see him run, or to have to separate the three of you.  Agents.” 

“Sir,” Illya and Gaby says.   

“Good afternoon,” Waverly says, and leaves them.  

* * *

“You’ve never been to Paris?”  Napoleon is looking at Gaby like she’s grown a second head.   

“I’ve never had the opportunity,” she says, a little dryly.  Illya mutters something into his coffee cup.  Napoleon had almost missed their plane.  Gaby had been worried that the Vinciguerras had caught up with him.  But he’d turned up alive and well, more cheerful than Gaby remembers ever seeing him, and chattered about Paris until the plane took off.   

“You’re going to love it,” Solo promises, eyes shining.  “Best city in the world.  I’ll take you around, show you all the best places.” 

“Is not a vacation,” Illya grumbles.  He’s upset because Waverly scolded them, and they lost the Batista case.  Gaby’s already elected to ignore Waverly’s “advice”—if they push and Napoleon bites, she’ll back off, but the way she sees it, she’s not hurting anyone.  It’s a private affair anyway, not a professional one.  She’s trying to find something out about her lover, not her teammate.   

(It’s a blurry distinction, she knows, but she’s sticking to it.)  

Napoleon waves Illya’s concern away.  “It’s Paris,” he says.  “I know the city better than I know my own mother.  We’ll be fine.  There’s boltholes all over the place.” 

“Weren’t you caught in Paris?”  Illya asks pointedly.   

Napoleon rolls his eyes, letting the slight slide off his back.  “Irrelevant.  As I haven’t just swiped a Monet, I think we’re safe.”  

“Damn,” Gaby says, “there goes my retirement plan.”  Napoleon grins at her, wide and delighted, and even Illya laughs.  Easy affection wells up in her chest.   

“So,” she says, “tour first, or are there some other activities on our agenda?” 

“You’re ridiculous,” Napoleon says.  They’re on an airplane, for god’s sake.  But there’s hunger in his eyes, and he doesn’t stop Gaby when she reaches for him, cups him through his slacks.  Illya makes a low, wanting sound in his throat.   

“Are you going to stop me?”  Gaby asks, coy.  Napoleon spreads his legs for her, throws his head back to expose the perfect column of his throat.   

“Of course not,” he says.  

* * *

Paris is everything Napoleon promised.  They clean themselves up once they land—and after Illya fucks Napoleon in the shower while Gaby watches—and Napoleon takes them out to eat at a charming little café where Illya pulls Gaby into his lap and Napoleon feeds them both bits of food, sips of wine, his cold fingers tracing playfully around their lips.   

“What if someone sees?”  Gaby says, a little breathless.   

Napoleon’s eyes glitter affectionately.  “It’s Paris,” he says.  “No one cares here, _ma cher._ ”  

“Western decadence,” Illya purrs, amusement making him smug.  Gaby grinds down in his lap, making him groan.   

“Don’t tease,” she says, through gritted teeth.   

The three of them don’t get thrown out of the restaurant even when Illya slips his hand up under Gaby's skirt and teases her until she comes with a shuddering gasp, and after Napoleon takes them around, arm in arm, to his favorite places.   

He shows them statues and fountains, hidden nooks and crannies, ugly gargoyles, fantastic cathedrals; he has something to say about all of it, and chatters about each feature of Paris like he knows it intimately, like he carved the statues and built the cathedrals himself.   

He’s more alive than Gaby remembers ever seeing him.  Wine and passion put color in his face and Gaby warms his fingertips with her own.   

 _It’s like he’s a different person,_ she mouths to Illya, fascinated.   

They are in Paris uninterrupted for two weeks.  Every day they sleep late in their hotel room, kissing and having languid, lazy sex, and at night they go out to explore the city.   

Gaby picks up some French.  Illya smiles more often.  And Napoleon seems—younger.  Not nearly as slow and tired.   

They still work, of course.  Both Illya and Napoleon have contacts in the city who might know which of the Vinciguerras’ last friends called for their deaths.  Gaby sorts through UNCLE’s files tracking Nazis and sympathizers and the flow of money around the world.  Illya quietly reaches out to his doctor contact.  Waverly checks in every few days.   

They never go anywhere unarmed and always sit facing the street, exit points mapped out between them.    

“If we stay here any longer, I’m going to get tragically fat,” Gaby announces on a Thursday, stuffed full of _pêche Melba_ and wine.  “You’ll have to roll me over our enemies.”  

“Napoleon will still buy you dresses,” Illya promises, kissing her hand.   

“I have the perfect Patou in mind,” Napoleon says, and he and Illya grin at each other in a way that usually ends with one of them sucking the other off in an alley.   

Gaby rolls her eyes.  “Where are we going tonight?”  she asks.   

“Only one place left,” Napoleon says, with a sly, secret smile.  “The Arc du Triomphe looks especially beautiful in the moonlight.” 

“Where is that?”  Illya asks, curious.   

“He means he doesn’t want to walk there,” Gaby says.  Illya hums.   

“Not far,” Napoleon promises, excitement shining in his face.  Gaby can tell that he loves this place, this Arc.  He’s fond of art, their Napoleon, but there are a few pieces that he _loves._  

“Let’s go, then,” Gaby says, “because if I stay here I’m going to drink another glass of wine, and if I do that I am not going anywhere.”   

Illya offers Gaby his elbow.  Napoleon goes ahead of them, nearly dancing.   

The Arc comes up over the city, lit from below.  All around it is empty space, a circle of roads and paths that turns around the Arc before taking pedestrians and cars back to the city after they’ve beheld the Arc from every angle.   

“—commissioned by Napoleon,” Napoleon is saying, waving his hands.  “But it took nearly forty years to finish.”  

“Are you named after Napoleon?”  Gaby asks.  “The famous one, I mean.” 

Gaby and Illya’s Napoleon shakes his head.  “ _Solo_ is an Italian name,” he says.  “From Naples, I think.  My mother liked the way _Napoleon_ sounded.”   

Illya snorts quietly.  _He_ thinks that ‘Napoleon Solo’ isn’t their partner’s real name; his KGB contacts weren’t able to turn up anything about him outside of the CIA file.  “It’s like he came from nowhere,” Illya had complained the other day.   

Gaby swats him.   

Napoleon takes them right up to the Arc, as close as they can get, pointing out the carvings on the pillars.  “ _Le Depart de 1792,_ ” he says.  “And _Le Triumphe de 1810._ ” The carved figures are stunning, proud; the angels radiant; the details breathtaking.   

“That man looks like you,” Illya says, pointing to the leftmost carving.  “Doesn’t he?” 

Gaby follows where Illya’s pointing.  One of the figures in _Le Depart de 1792_ does look like Napoleon; the carving has longer hair, a hat on his head, but the nose is the same, the jawline.  The statue’s eyes are marble, but Gaby can see Napoleon in them.   

“Oh my god,” she says.   

“I’ve never noticed,” Napoleon says easily.  “Come on, there’s more on the other side.”  

But Gaby keeps looking up at the statue.  She doesn’t understand how it can look _exactly_ like Napoleon.  It’s a hundred and fifty years old.  Napoleon Solo is thirty-four.  “It looks just like you,” she says.  “How—” 

“ _Le fusil!_ ” someone in the streets shouts.  “ _Le fusil!”_  

All three of them spin around, alarmed, and Gaby sees Marco Batista coming across the street, a Kalashnikov leveled at them and a grim expression on his face.   

“ _Get down!_ ” Illya thunders, but it’s too late.  The muzzle flashes— 

Napoleon fastens a hand around the back of Gaby’s dress, tosses her aside into Illya’s arms, and steps forward.  Gaby fumbles for her own gun.  Bullets strafe the street and the sides of the Arc.  Napoleon jerks, makes a surprised sound, and Batista keeps firing— 

Illya clears his gun first and shoots Batista twice, once in the shoulder and once in the head.  He drops.  People are running in every direction, screaming.   

Napoleon looks down at his chest.  Brilliant spots of red are growing, stark against his white shirt, his gray jacket.  “Ah,” he says, and falls. 

* * *

In 1792, when his name was Edgar Treville, Napoleon was shot six times and stabbed another fifteen.  He didn’t die, of course, but he wanted to.  He remembers pulling himself into a filthy alley, one arm nearly torn off by the force of a bullet, his guts dragging behind him in the dirt and the blood and the fetid pools of spilled wine left behind by rioting revolutionaries, remembers screaming, remembers praying for _la guillotine_ to separate his head from his shoulders and be done with it.   

It was a long time before he could set foot in Paris again.  He’d had to clean each inch of his intestines off by hand, because first his wounds healed with all of the dirt and straw and broken bone still stuck to them, and the pain had been unbearable.  He’d cut open his own belly, pulled his guts through his own hands. He’d passed out twice.  Three days of lying in his own blood and filth later, he’d healed enough to stagger out of the city and haul himself to London, where he took a new name and stayed far, far away from any revolutions for as long as he was reasonably able.   

This is probably not nearly as bad as that.  Napoleon’s having a difficult time gauging the severity of his injuries because he can’t seem to stay conscious for longer than thirty seconds, but he’s pretty sure that all of his limbs are attached and all of his organs are inside his body, so.  Look at the bright side.  It could be worse.   

He’s moving.  There’s fire in his chest, his belly, one shoulder and his upper thigh— _Shit,_ he thinks, _that’s going to get everywhere, femoral bleeding is always fun_ —but he can ignore it.  He’s not sure why he’s moving.   

 _Gaby,_ his brain tells him.  _Gaby’s driving.  They’re taking you somewhere._  

“Don’t move, Cowboy,” says a deep voice, and Napoleon feels pressure on his chest, his gut.  He knows that voice. It takes him a minute to string the voice together with some splintered memories—long-fingered hands, a chessboard, a silver watch, a mouthful of scotch—and get _Illya._  

“Peril?”  he rasps.  Fuck, does he sound awful.  He clears his throat and manages to turn his head enough to spit.  He can’t see.  That’s not unusual.  It’s a relief, actually—he doesn’t have to see what a mess he is.   

“I’m here, быть любимой,” Illya says.  Panic flavors his voice.  “Shh, just hold on.  We are going to hospital, you have been shot—” 

Napoleon blacks out for a moment.  (That would be the catastrophic blood loss.)  When he comes to he can see, just a little; Illya is above him, white-faced, splattered with blood.  Car horns wail.  Gaby’s perfect bun has come loose; her eyes are fixed on the road.   

“No,” Napoleon says.  He coughs deeply.  There’s a bullet in his lung; his body is trying to heal over it, but can’t.  “No hospital.”  

“You’ve been _shot,_ ” Illya says.  “You’re dying.”  

Napoleon would laugh, but his lungs are full of blood.  He’s going to drown.  Joy.   

“No,” he says, a near-growl, “hospitals.  Too—” he pauses to hack.  “Dangerous.”  

“You’re _dying,_ ” Illya repeats.  Gaby lurches the car, shouting in German.  The movement dislodges Illya’s hands.  Blood bubbles up, wet and reeking.   

“Illya,” Napoleon tries, “please.”  

Illya hesitates.  “You want us to let you die?” 

 _If only._  

“No.  I need—” another cough “—you to trust me.  Pull the bullets out.”  

“Я не буду,” Illya snaps.  “I will not.”  

“ _Please._ Or move.  Let me do it myself.”  

His vision gutters out again.  He can’t see Illya, but he can hear him, smell him; he can feel the moment Illya gives up.   

“It will hurt,” he warns.   

“Worse?” 

Nobody laughs.   

His hearing grays out too, blood loss pulling at him.  Gaby says something to Illya, high and panicked.  Napoleon breathes and focuses.  He’d rather be blind than deaf.  After a moment his hearing returns.   

“All I have is pocketknife,” Illya says, pained.  “Cowboy?  Can you hear me?” 

Napoleon manages to nod.  If he opens his mouth again he’s going to scream.  He’s lost probably as much blood as he has; he doesn’t need to make it worse.   

Illya, bless his Russian sensibilities, doesn’t say anything else, just starts cutting.   

Needless to say, it hurts.  Napoleon bites down on his tongue—what’s one more injury—and tries to stay still.  Illya starts with one of the bullets in his chest.  He’s quick about it, digging the bullet out, dropping it to the floor, and starting in on the other.   

So it goes.  The gut bullet is the worst; Illya has to cut through the majority of Napoleon’s internal organs to get at it where it’s lodged in a kidney, nearly a through and through, and Napoleon blacks out three more times.  The leg bullet bleeds like a motherfucker as it goes, but the one in his shoulder leaves rather easily.   

After, Napoleon realizes that they’ve stopped moving.  He can feel his wounds starting to mend, the blood slowing, his cells knitting themselves back together one at a time.  Gaby is craned around, staring at him, her face white, her eyes horrified.  Illya has blood up to his elbows, across his chest, splattered on his cheeks and in his hair.  Napoleon knows that he himself looks like corpse.  The stink of blood is making him lightheaded.   

Napoleon struggles to sit up and manages it.  There’s a hole ripped out of his chest the size of his closed fist.  His clothes are  black with blood.   

“You should be dead,” Illya finally says, slowly.  “How—” 

Napoleon grimaces.  His wounds ache, fire swimming up to rest at the base of his skull.  The healing is the worst part.  The next twenty-four hours are going to be uncomfortable.   

“Yeah,” he manages, “I don’t really do that.” 


	2. stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh, guys, thank you so much for your overwhelming response to this, seriously, i'm so flattered. 
> 
> i'm sorry this took so long??? it grew on me, idk, it's like twice as long as the last one. i'm so tired.

make them stay, make them stone

 

Illya Kuryakin has seen many strange things.  Half a lifetime in Special Forces and the KGB has taken him nearly everywhere and shown him nearly everything.

But this, he thinks, is the strangest thing he's ever seen. 

Napoleon is not dead.  He is not _alright_ —though he assures them that he will be, in time—but he took five bullets at the foot of the Arc du Triomphe, one of them to the gut, and he is not dead.

He is, in fact, healing.

Gaby holds herself together rather well, all things considered.  She books a room for them in a seedy hostel north of the Seine, goes out and buys Napoleon new clothes while Illya stands guard over him, alert and waiting, and hides their blood-soaked, hotwired car well out of sight. 

They give Napoleon the bed.  Cowboy falls asleep almost immediately, and Illya does what he can to patch up his injuries, but otherwise lets him be. 

His mind is reeling. 

Gaby slumps down to sit beside him on the floor, threading her fingers through his.  (Illya has never been a squeamish man; the war devastated his country and he has seen and committed many atrocities over his career, but he wants to wash his hands now, down to the bone.  Cowboy lost so much blood.)

"Have you ever seen anything like this?"  Gaby whispers.  She raises their interlocked hands, inspects Illya's knuckles.  There is a dark smudge of blood in one of her eyebrows. 

"No," Illya says.  "Never.  I do not—"  he stops. 

"Is he… what is he?  Was he—made?" 

Illya snorts. "The Americans could not do this."

"You're certain?"

"There were... rumors," Illya says.  "A program, made of doctors, biologists, engineers, to make a perfect soldier.  But that was long ago, and besides.  Program was scrapped.  No science can make man more than man."

"Something did," Gaby hisses.  "Illya, he should be _dead._ I don't—I don't understand."

Illya doesn't either, but he is not going to leave Napoleon here, alone, injured, not with the last of the Vinciguerras' supporters still out there gunning for him.  He cannot wrap his head around this revelation, around the way his partner's skin has already started to knit back together. 

"I am staying," he says lowly. 

Gaby stares at Illya for a moment, and then an angry flush colors her face. "So am I!  I don't _understand,_ but I'm not going to leave him!  Do you think that I could do that do him?  To you?  We're partners!  We're—"

They are partners, the three of them, and lovers too.  In the KGB relationships between partners are vigorously discouraged for this exact reason.  Attachment breeds disloyalty.  Lapses in judgment.  Blindness and mistakes. 

Illya opens and closes his hands, feeling helpless. 

"Cowboy has been lying to us," Illya murmurs.  "I would not blame you, if you left to go somewhere safe.  It would be sensible thing to do."

"No!"  Fire blazes in Gaby's eyes.  She jerks her hand out of Illya's and glares.  "Are you insane?  I'm going to stay.  I don't—I don't care that he lied.  He had a good reason."

Illya dips his head, acknowledging the truth of that.  If he hadn't seen Cowboy's wounds start to mend with his own eyes, he would not have believed anyone who told him that such a thing was possible.  It defied all the laws of nature Illya knew. 

"Okay," he says.  "We stay."

From the bed, there's a dry, rasping laugh.  "You really shouldn't," Napoleon says, without rolling over. 

"Napoleon!"  Gaby scrambles to her feet.  "You're awake.  How are you feeling?  What—"

"You should leave," Napoleon repeats, and a note of cruelty has entered his voice, a note of abject despair.  "It's not safe to be around me, Gabs.  You're better off far away."

"Why?"  Illya stands too and goes to Gaby's side by the bed, offering quiet support. 

Cowboy laughs again, a sound like breaking stone.  "I should think it's obvious," he drawls.  "I'm cursed."

* * *

Napoleon will not look at them.  That alone makes Gaby nervous, more nervous and afraid than she'd been watching him die in the backseat of a stolen car.

(Well, that's a lie.  Gaby has never been so afraid in her life.  The Vinciguerra affair had been its own special kind of hell, but she's never driven sixteen kilometers with her lover dying in the backseat before.)

 _This is alright,_ Gaby tells herself.  _He's alive.  He's alive.  We can work out all the rest later._

"Cursed," Illya says slowly, a wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows.  "What do you mean, _cursed_?"

Napoleon, most of his face hidden in his uninjured arm, huffs.  "What I said," he growls.  "Isn't it obvious?"

 _Cursed._ "Like... magic?"  Gaby asks, hesitant.  The word feels strange on her tongue. 

There is little place for magic behind the Iron Curtain.  Gaby's father certainly had no patience for fairytales and magic, and few of her foster parents had either.  Old grannies told some of the Grimm tales, stories of goblins and elves, faeries, magic, but Gaby had never thought—never considered—that there could be truth to any of it. 

But Illya had said that no science could make Napoleon heal like this. 

Gently, Gaby puts her hands on Napoleon's shoulder and peels back the dressing.  He grumbles, but doesn't fight her. 

His wound is scabbed over, red and inflamed, but it looks days, weeks old.  Gaby could see thick, shiny patches of scar tissue beginning to form around the wound. 

"Like magic," she murmurs, putting the dressing back on.  "I don’t understand.  Magic is real."  It's not a question; she has the evidence under her hands, and even if she doesn't understand Gaby can accept it.  For Napoleon, anyway.  Anyone else she would probably send to the hospital. 

Napoleon's lip curls.  "Is, was.  It used to be, when I was younger."

Everything snaps into place all at once like a circuit coming together.  "You can't die," Gaby whispers. "At all."

"Clever girl.  No," says Napoleon, "not at all."

"How old are you?"  He's at least two hundred, if he was around for the architects of the Arc du Triomphe to carve a statue from him.  That is barely something Gaby can wrap her head around, but she's always been the most adaptable of their trio.  Illya is rooted in his ways and Napoleon is flexible, certainly, but prone to thinking like a thief even after a decade of being a spy. 

Napoleon finally rolls over and meets Gaby's eyes.  His own are hard and flat, like polished stones.  "It's difficult to say.  I was born not long after the fifth King Henry died and his son, Henry the Sixth, took the throne."

Gaby blinks.  She knows very little about English kings—she's guessing these are English kings, anyway—but her very Catholic maternal grandmother used to spit on the memory of the Protestant dog Henry the Eight, and _he_ was king four hundred years ago. 

"You are older than America," Illya says flatly. 

Napoleon laughs, brittle.  "Older than the discovery of America, Peril."

Illya subsides, his face tight, unreadable. 

Trying to lighten the mood, Gaby says, "You're really English?  Waverly will be delighted."  She figures they can... _process_ all of this later, when they're out of Paris and out of danger.  They don't have time to pry all of Napoleon's secrets from him right now. 

"Irish," Napoleon says.  "There wasn't any magic left in England by then, but we had enough, still."

"You are saying," Illya says, slowly and precisely, "that you are cursed by magic.  That you are _immortal._ "

"I _really_ don't like that word," Napoleon says, and the cruelty is back in his voice.  "I'm not going to live forever.  That was beyond even the powers of the fae, though I'm sure they would've done it if they could.  I made them very angry, you see."

" _Fae?_ "  Illya turns away, drags a hand through his hair.  "There is no such thing as феи."

"Just like there's no such thing as healing from a gunshot wound, right?"  Napoleon shoots back, flicking his injured shoulder.  The bandages on his chest peek out up from under the collar of his shirt. 

That shuts Illya up.

Napoleon sighs.  "Just leave," he says.  "Tell Waverly I died.  Move on with your lives.  It's better for all of us that way."

"It isn't," Gaby argues, and that makes Napoleon laugh again, long and creaking.  He breaks off to cough deeply.  His teeth are flecked with blood. 

"Better for who?"  he growls.  "You?  The Vinciguerras' people will still be gunning for me.  Me?  What use do I have for two baby spies?  You'll slow me down.  I can disappear.  I've got centuries of practice.  But _you_?  Red Peril here sticks out like a sore thumb wherever he goes and _you,_ Miss Teller, are very hard to ignore, or to forget."

It's phrased as a compliment, but something about Napoleon's tone, his sneer, makes Gaby's hackles rise.  "Now listen," she starts, but Napoleon cuts her off. 

"Did you think you were special?"  he snaps.  "I've had a hundred lovers, Gaby.  More.  It's actually rather hard to keep track of them all.  What we had was fun, sweetheart, but it was never meant to last.  You're just a notch in my—"

Illya surges forward before Gaby can react, grabs Napoleon by the shoulders, pins him down.  Napoleon hisses in pain, twisting to get out of Illya's grip, until pain and Illya's own inexorability tire him out. 

"Do not," Illya says, very clearly, "talk about Gaby like that."

"And," he adds, when Napoleon opens his mouth to argue, "do not act like we meant—mean—nothing to you.  You are terrible liar, Cowboy, when it comes to things like this."

"How would you know?"  Napoleon spits.  "You don't know anything about me."

"Maybe not," Illya says.  And that hurts him, Gaby can tell.  She's not sure how much of all of this Illya actually believes—hell, she's not sure how much of it _she_ believes—but she knows that it hurts that Napoleon doesn't trust them, didn't share this with them. 

He wouldn't have told them.  They know now because he failed to die on them, and that's the only reason.  He would have kept this secret until—what?  Until he faded out of their lives?  Just vanished?  That, more than anything, makes Gaby angry. 

When Napoleon is better, she's going to kick his ass.

"You look at Gaby like you look at Paris," Illya says.  "Like you cannot look away."

Gaby blinks.  She's never caught Napoleon looking at her like that. 

Napoleon glares up at Illya, irritation written plainly across his face, heartbreak, desolation.  Finally, he says, "What the fuck, Peril.  You been sneaking Jane Austen while we haven't been looking?"

Illya, with great dignity, sniffs.  "She is master of English language," he says.  "And Mr. Darcy is good role model."

The tension breaks.  Gaby laughs despite herself and even Napoleon cracks a grin. 

"Does that make me Lizzie Bennett?" he asks. 

"No.  Gaby is Elizabeth.  _You_ are Mr. Wickham."  Illya lets Napoleon up, fussing over his shoulder again, his bad temper gone.  This time, Napoleon lets him. 

"I don't have a better explanation for you," Napoleon says, tiredly. 

"I do not need one," says Illya gruffly.  "Knew I would never understand you anyway.  You are a mystery, Cowboy.  You baffle even KGB's top psychologists."

"That maybe makes my decade, just a little," Napoleon admits.  He turns to Gaby, face open and soft.  "I'm sorry.  I didn't mean what I said, you know.  It's safer if you leave me.  Nothing Batista does will kill me, but _you_ are mortal.  Mortals are fragile."

"Batista's dead," Gaby says.  "And I forgive you.  Under one condition."  She's still going to kick his ass, but he doesn't need to know that.  It's always more fun if her victims don't know what's coming.

Napoleon eyes her, apprehensive.  "And that condition is...?"

Gaby crosses her arms over her chest.  Her lover is an immortal being cursed by faerie magic.  She’s going to need a very long, very detailed explanation.  "Tell me _everything._ "

* * *

 _Five hundred and fifty years, and I'll never understand mortals,_ Napoleon thinks, much, much later.  Illya is out finding them a way into England and Gaby is asleep, curled up against his side. 

The worst of the healing is over, now.  The fire's gone out, replaced by an itch, an ache.  In another day he'll only be a little stiff.  By the end of the week, he'll be hale and hearty.  The scars will fade within a year. 

Napoleon understands himself.  He’s not really one for introspection—never has been, hopes he never will be—but he _is_ a quick learner.  A century into the rest of his life, he'd been forced to confront both the aspects of his personality and his new durability. 

He knows himself.  His vices—drinking, gambling, any and every little bit of risk, anything to like up his nerve endings and put a bit of life back in his bones—and his flaws, weaknesses, the little fissures that seemed only skin deep but ran down to his armature. 

Mortals, though.  He'd think that if he'd seen one, he'd seen them all, but they continue to be strange and confusing.  Two hundred years ago—and only a hundred in Scotland, bless them—if he told anybody, even his second wife, what he was, they'd burn him alive. He had to fake age with dye and wigs.   

But Gaby and Illya don't seem to care that Napoleon is a monstrosity.  Illya's skeptical, still, but Gaby's been mostly curious—she grilled him about nearly everything she could think of, including famous historical figures he's met and known—and not at all like she's going to run for torches and pitchforks the second she gets the chance.   It's touching, really.  Makes Napoleon's little marble heart grow three sizes. 

And that's another weird thing.  Napoleon didn't really get an instruction manual for immortality, no pamphlet, no dossier.  The fae had hit him with their power, knocked him out cold for three decades, and when he'd woken up and staggered down to his village, the few who remembered him put a spear in his belly.  He'd had to figure the reality of his life out by trial and usually very obnoxiously grievous error.

In his considerable experience, healing comes at a cost.  The fae of his day were not kind, and this was meant to be a punishment.  He gets to live forever, but he's not _human_ anymore, and he gets less human every time his body drags itself back from the brink.  Little cuts and bruises and burns are nothing.  Getting shot by a cannonball, though, or burned alive, or dismembered, _those_ take something out of him.

Not that Napoleon Solo has ever had much to give, emotionally-speaking.  He's never been a sociopath, and he isn't now, but his own self-interest has always been his primary concern, and care for others something he's rarely bestowed and jealously guarded.  He's lasted this long because he's so careful with his affections; it's significantly harder to adapt to eternal life if there are wives and children and siblings and lovers dying all the time. 

Énna the Eel, they called him, back in the day.  Nothing in his head but schemes, nothing in his heart but tricks and lies. 

Napoleon still loves Illya and Gaby.  He shouldn't—he usually doesn't, after.  Every time he doesn’t die, he loses something or someone.  The capacity for easy, careless affection.  The last bit of caution in his animal hindbrain.  A few degrees of body heat. 

He's sustained by his humanity, he thinks.  That's what he didn’t understand when he walked into the wild fen to steal secrets from the fae.  They fueled themselves off of emotion.  Awe, terror, wild ecstasy.  The more primal, the better. 

Love is about as primal as it gets.  He should have paid for his life this time with love.   He thought he had already, decades and decades ago.  But he didn't.  Having Gaby curled up against him still makes something stir in his old chest, warm and alive and beating.  

Frankly, it's suspicious as hell.  The fae aren't just going to let up, no matter how cute and wonderful Gaby and Illya are.  The curse hasn't broken—he's still healing—and his hands are still cold, so.

Something's up.  A big something.  Napoleon's impulse control is suspect, but his instincts are quite good.  He doesn't like that he can't immediately suss out the cost.  He's worried that this time, the blood price will come out of Gaby or Illya. 

(He wonders, for a half-second, if maybe this means that the curse is finally weakening.  But he doesn’t want to hope, so he shuts that down.) 

Gaby stirs against his side, warm and lovely.  He strokes a hand down her back out of habit.  Gaby smiles and leans into it. 

"I was thinking," she says drowsily, a teasing gleam in her eyes, "what would happen if your head got cut off?  Would we have to glue you back together, or would one half of you grow the needed parts?"

"I would multiply, unfortunately," Napoleon says, fond.  That's a blatant lie, of course.  He's never tested the idea, but he thinks that decapitation would be the end of it all. 

"Oh, god," Gaby laughs, relaxing against him, "I don't know what we'd do with two of you."

"Oh?"  Napoleon grins again, this time playful and filthy, and slides his hand down even lower.  "I could think of some things."

Gaby matches his grin.  "Prove it," she says, and Napoleon does.

* * *

Illya finds a ride out of Paris and bundles his partners onto a rickety fishing boat in the dead of night.  Cowboy is well enough to get around on his own, for the most part; Illya remembers how pale and fragile he'd been, lips blue with blood loss and eyes blown, misty. 

He looks much better now.  Pale still, half a corpse, but better.  He is well enough to flirt with Gaby, at any rate, though he's giving Illya a very wide berth. 

Illya is alright with that.  Now that the terror and the pulse of Napoleon's shooting have ebbed away, Illya is confronted with reality.

As they sail across the English Channel, wrapped up in darkness and the first breaths of an autumn chill, Illya mulls the last few days over. 

Illya was not raised to hold with fairytales.  He cannot recall ever hearing any, with the exception of a few whispers of Баба Яга, the Bony-legged, her mortar and pestle, her chicken-stilt house.  His father had been a forward-thinking man, a pragmatist.  Illya knows many spies who are superstitious, but he himself is not one of them.  Too often people let go of fact and reason, he thinks. 

 _But science could not do this._ He knows that too, unless the Americans stumbled upon a decade of biochemical research while the KGB's back was turned. 

"I can hear you thinking, you know," Cowboy says dryly, his eyes glittering.  The moon is bright and strong above them, filling the waves and Gaby's hair and the hollows of Napoleon's face with silver.  "Knock it off.  You're giving me a headache."

Illya, despite himself, quirks an eyebrow.  "What, you are telepath now too?"

That wrings a bright grin out of Cowboy.  Illya'd heard him laughing softly with Gaby back in the hostel in Paris, a measure of harmony restored between them, but they had stopped when he'd entered the room. 

It is good to hear Cowboy laugh, to see him smile.  It makes Illya feel as though everything will be alright again, eventually.  He does not understand Napoleon Solo and he doubts he ever will, but then he knew that already. 

"No," Napoleon says, "I'm not, though that would be handy, don't you think?  It would certainly make our job easier."

Illya snorts, guiding the boat with on hand.  The English Channel is calm tonight. "A rare blessing," Cowboy had said, a centuries-old joke buried in his voice. 

 _Centuries old._ That will take some getting used to.   (The real problem, Illya tells himself, is that now he will never be able to claim seniority and take over Section One.  He's going to be stuck as Number Two for the rest of his career.)

While Illya knows that he is not nearly as adaptable as either of his partners, with enough time he'll be able to get over this magic and curses business.  It makes no sense that Napoleon is alive, but he is.  Illya does not have to bury him.  Perhaps it is selfish, but Illya's _glad._ Just this once, he thinks he'll hold with fairytales. 

"So," Gaby says, brushing her fingertips across Illya's hip, "what do we do now?"

"Lie low," Illya says. 

"Root out the last of Victoria's friends," Cowboy disagrees. 

"They _shot you,_ " Gaby says, frowning. 

"Yes, and it's rather uncomfortable, which is why I'd like to prevent more shooting in the future," Napoleon bites back, still dry.  "Besides, Batista was gunning for you, Gabs.  I think last night we established that we're all helplessly attached to each other, mm?  I'd rather not bury you just yet, darling."

The sentiment is so close to Illya's own that he wonders for a mad second if Napoleon _is_ telepathic.  Instead of asking again, he only hums. 

"Rushing into gunfight is always bad idea," he cautions.  "Fae curse or no.  We should go somewhere safe and plan.  Reach out to contacts.  Then go in for kill.  We should go to London."

"London's too big to be safe," Cowboy points out, throwing an arm around Gaby's shoulders.  "Even if the Circus has the right men in town.  It's a city of eight million people, Peril.  I've got a safe house there, but I'd rather not risk getting any blood on my Matisses."

"You have a Matisse?"  Illya says, appalled.  "You degenerate, you said you returned everything you stole."

"I returned everything they _accused_ me of stealing."  Cowboy grins again, and the sight of it is almost enough to make Illya forgive him for being the kind of мудак who steals from museums. 

"Do you have any Van Goghs?" Gaby asks, interested.  "My father loved _Starry Night._ "

"I could never bring myself to steal a Van Gogh," Napoleon says, sounding wistful. "Painting meant so much to the poor bastard.  I went after the _Sunflowers_ once and couldn't go through with it."

"But you could steal a Matisse?"  Illya hisses.

"Down, Peril." 

"Should throw you overboard," Illya grumbles. 

"So," Gaby says, pulling them back on task like she usually does, "where are we going?"

Illya and Napoleon trade glances. 

"I know a place in England," Cowboy says finally.  "Remote, out of the way.  We could put the word out, bait a neat little trap." 

Illya considers.  "We will have to tell Waverly.  But I think it is good plan. Minimizes variables. No one will get hurt who should not."

And, despite his ability, Illya intends to protect Cowboy, too.  It is obvious to Illya that he was in terrible pain after the shooting; Illya would like to spare him that in the future, if he can. 

"Excellent," Gaby says.  "Then we should stop in Brighton.  There's a woman we need to talk to."

"She with UNCLE?"  Napoleon asks. 

"Don't be ridiculous," Gaby says.  "She sells hats."

* * *

 The hat maker in Bristol is as helpful as Waverly said she'd be.  She promises to tell Waverly what their plan is and to make sure word of their whereabouts is released to the right bad people. 

"You've caused quite an uproar, darlings," she had tutted, fixing them up with tea, sandwiches, a stack of British pounds, a new cap for Illya and a lovely sun hat for Gaby.  Even Napoleon, who's more finicky about his hair than anyone Gaby's ever met, accepts a hat, pulling it down low over his eyes. 

"So where is this safe house?"  Illya asks.  He looks exhausted.  They all do.  Gaby brushes her fingers against his for a moment, offers him a small smile.  Illya smiles back. 

"Old country," Napoleon says.  "Silecroft.  It's in the Lake District up in Cumbria, not far from the sea."

"Can you get there from here?"

"Yes.  All we need is a car."

Gaby picks a trim little German-made car—she's allowed her preferences, no matter what Napoleon says—and they set off, sticking to small villages and back roads.  Despite the fact that she's a British citizen now, Gaby feels like she's deep in enemy territory.  Every village is a threat.  Every empty stretch of road is a killing ground. 

Napoleon appears unruffled, at ease no matter what hamlet they're in or bumpy dirt road they're on, even though Gaby knows his gut wound is giving him some pain. 

Gaby's aware, though, now more than ever, that this calm and relaxed face he puts on is an act.  Napoleon told her, among other things, that he didn't feel like a normal person, that most of his feelings were muted and slow, sluggish, difficult to bring out. 

Gaby thinks that he feels things as strongly as any of them do, but he doesn't want to admit it.  She can't blame him; she believes almost everything he told her, and she can't even imagine being five hundred years and fifty.  She's only twenty-five and sometimes she feels like she's lived too much. 

To Napoleon, she must look like a child. 

It takes them nearly thirteen hours to get from Brighton to Silecroft.  They drive in shifts and sleep restlessly in the passenger seat while the other watches for anyone following them.  Napoleon hums old songs under his breath.  Illya checks all of their guns again, and again, and again. 

Finally, they drive into the fringes of an old, tall forest, and Napoleon smiles. 

"It's a national preserve," he explains.  "Silecroft's a sleepy little place, and the cottage is even farther out in the woods.  It’ll take Victoria's friends quite some time to track us down, I think."

Gaby wrinkles her nose.  She's decidedly metropolitan, she's realized.  Being out in the woods is boring.  Illya seems pleased enough, though, as Napoleon directs them around the outskirts of a tiny village and deep into the trees. 

"We're here," Napoleon says, when the road runs out. 

"This is good," says Illya, and sets of immediately to inspect everything.

"Cottage?" Gaby repeats, glaring. 

Napoleon only smiles.  "Come in," he says.  "I need to call into town and have some food sent up.  Make yourself at home." 

The "cottage" is in a fact a house, and a big one at that.  There's a parlor, four or five bedrooms, a full kitchen, two studies, a dining room, and a luxurious bathroom, all decorated with pale brick and light walls, the floors and bare rafters a dark, masculine wood. 

It's very Napoleon, Gaby realizes.  He's extravagant and flamboyant in his dress, choosing richly-patterned waistcoats and painfully expensive silk ties, but he prefers to live in more spare places.  His flat in London looks a lot like this. 

Gaby starts to pull the coverings off the furniture, sneezing at the dust. 

"None of us have anything to wear," she tells Napoleon, when he comes wandering back down the hall to Gaby.  He looks her up and down. 

"Sure you do," he says.  "Come on."  He takes her to one of the rooms and throws open an armoire.  "It's been awhile since I've had a lady friend here," he says apologetically.  "Classic is a good look, though." 

"There must be two dozen outfits in here," Gaby breathes, checking the labels.  Prada, Gucci, Patou, Chanel.  "How much money do you _have?_ "

Napoleon's eyes sparkle, a touch of humor coming back.  "I don't like to brag," he says. 

"That is a bald-faced lie."

He laughs.  "True.  More than I need, truthfully.  There wasn't much else to do in the sixties.  The last sixties, I mean.  I bought this place in.... 1870?  Kept the deed.  It turned out to be a nice bolt hole back in during Prohibition." 

"Whose dresses were these?"  Gaby runs her fingers over the soft fabrics again, reverently.  "Did you... have a wife?"  She hadn't wanted to ask him, back in Paris.  It seemed unfair then, like she was using his guilt to pry away all his secrets. 

"No," Napoleon says, easily enough.  "Not then.  It's been a long time since I was married.  I'm not very good at it, unfortunately." 

Gaby lets it go.  "I think you could probably buy half of East Berlin with these," she says, shaking her head. 

Napoleon's expression turns sly, wanting.  "You like rich men, Miss Teller?"

"I like," Gaby says, low and teasing, "men who know their place."

Napoleon's grin turns downright lecherous.  "Oh?  And what's my place, mm?"

"Right now, underneath me," Gaby says, and pushes him back to the bed.  He's more solid than Illya, all muscle, but Gaby's strong too, and Napoleon doesn't seem to mind it when she manhandles him. 

He goes, collapsing backwards into the bed and lifting Gaby up easily to straddle his lap.  His hands are cold where they cradle her hips, his thumbs brushing the insides of her thighs.  She swats his hands away, enjoying the feeling of gooseflesh breaking out down her legs. 

She rolls her hips a few times experimentally; Napoleon hums in appreciation.  It's harder to make him lose control of himself than it is Illya.  Gaby, however, is patient and something of an expert in taking Napoleon Solo apart.  She says, "Why don't you come here and put your mouth to good use, rich man?"

Napoleon grins and lifts her up effortlessly, rolling so that Gaby's back is up against the headboard.  Usually he has a witty comment or a dirty joke ready, but this time he just bends to his task, first pressing a careful kiss to the corner of Gaby's mouth and then pushing her dress up around her belly and sliding her panties off. 

The first brush of his fingertips makes her hiss, cold as they are, but his tongue is warm and soon Gaby's trying to breathe slowly, swallow her moans and gasps, one hand threaded in Napoleon's dark hair and the other fisted in the sheets. 

"Well," Illya rasps from the doorway.  "I see you both have wasted no time."

Sensing a smart remark on Napoleon's part, Gaby tugs his hair warningly. 

"We're efficient," Gaby says, fighting to keep her voice even.  "Care to join us?"

Illya's eyes darken and he prowls over to the bed, leaning down to kiss Gaby, one hand braced against the wall above her and the other pressed flat against Napoleon's back, keeping him between Gaby's legs.  "Yes," he says.  "The house is safe, for now."

Napoleon laughs, and the sensation makes Gaby shudder. 

"Move," says Illya roughly, going to undo his belt. 

Gaby lets Napoleon up reluctantly.  He sits back on his heels, grinning, lips red and shining, while Gaby pulls her dress off over her head and Illya loses his clothes just as quickly. 

It's been a few days since Gaby and Illya have had each other, so Napoleon graciously allows Illya to pull Gaby away from him, into his own lap, where he holds her against him while they both fumble for a condom.  Gaby helps him roll it on and then he's done waiting.  Illya lifts her up and guides her down onto his cock slowly, an inch at a time, until they're both gasping. 

Gaby kisses Illya again, open-mouthed, and then tucks her head under his chin while he rolls his hips beneath her carefully. 

She lets him get a rhythm established, then angles her head up, calculating, and bites him.

Illya _snarls,_ hands tightening on Gaby's hips to the point of pain, and rolls them over.  From this angle he can fuck her harder, deeper, and one of them—all of them—groans in approval. 

Gaby meets Napoleon's eyes under Illya's braced arms.  His pupils are blown wide and his hair is a mess.  He's lost most of his clothes too; all he has on is a ragged wife beater Gaby bought in Paris secondhand.  He has his own cock in his hand, he's biting his lip, and Gaby knows he can come like this, if they let him. 

"Illya," Gaby gasps, "can Napoleon fuck you?"

"Yes," Illya growls, faster than he's ever agreed before, "yes, yes, fine—"

Napoleon nearly topples off the bed in his haste to reach the nightstand. 

Gaby laughs breathlessly.  "Are you serious?  You keep all of your houses stocked, just in case you're going to get lucky?"

"Darling, I'm never lucky," Napoleon says, returning to the bed with a jar of oil.  "And I'm perfectly serious.  Illyusha, are you ready?"

"Don't call me Illyusha," Illya grumbles, but he's nodding, dropping kisses on Gaby's forehead, her cheeks.  "Yes, I'm ready."

Napoleon works Illya open slowly, with the kind of care Gaby's only ever seen him take with old paintings or cups of tea that Gaby's made for him.  It's a special kind of torture, Napoleon in Illya, Illya in Gaby, all three of them trembling and wild-eyed, desperate, needy. 

Finally, Illya's opened enough to take Napoleon, who eases his cock in bit by bit until Illya's nearly whining with need, hot and still inside Gaby.

" _Move,_ " Gaby demands, and Napoleon, in his haze, finally gets it; he pulls back and thrusts into Illya, the motion carrying through to Gaby, and their rhythm begins again in earnest. 

They don't last long after that.  Illya comes first, Gaby right after, Napoleon a bare second behind. 

Her boys do what they usually do, one falling to her right, the other to her left, tangling her up between them.  They're a mess.  Somebody from the village is going to show up with food and get a very nasty shock. 

"So," Gaby says, once her heart rate has slowed down enough, "what kind of sex did the Irish have back in 1450?"

* * *

 Napoleon feels bad about ducking out on Illya and Gaby for about ten minutes.  Then he catches a sallow-faced Spaniard lurking in the woods around the road into Silecroft and is too busy subduing the man and stringing him up by his entrails to worry about it.  By the time he's wiped all the blood off his hands, he's quite over feeling bad and ready to move onto the next step in his plan.

He never intended to make a brave last stand with Illya and Gaby.  He's had more than enough of _that_ for several lifetimes, and dramatic fights to the death in the woods are overrated anyway. 

Drama is a personality trait Napoleon developed to, ironically enough, fly under the radar.  It's an old magician's trick; if his mouth is laughing and his personality flashing, no one is looking at his hands. 

Napoleon Solo is loud and melodramatic and a caricature of a man, really.  But Énna the Eel is, first and foremost, a pragmatist.  It's fun to play games when he's the only one who's going to get hurt, but he's not going to play games with Gaby and Illya's lives. 

They'll just get in the way, anyway. 

So.  He's got a plan.  He sowed some seeds in town today, a little false trail leading whoever might come for him to Ireland, where he'll be waiting alone. 

And, of course, he lied from the beginning.  Napoleon doesn't have a house in Silecroft.  He _does_ have a house in Annaside, a good five miles up the road and deeper into the woods, but Gaby and Illya didn't need to know that. 

They should be safe there, for a few days at least.  All he needs is a day or two anyway.

Then he can—

Napoleon very purposefully shuts down that train of thought, gathers himself, and sets off for the town of Silecroft, leaving the dead man and a trail of blood behind.  There’s no point in getting his hopes up.  Hope is an irrelevant emotion.  It distracts from the moment. 

In the village, he wanders into the local pub, asking very loudly where he can find a boat across the Irish Sea, looking suitably suspicious, and then tips well enough that whoever comes looking for him doesn't get his name out of the locals too easily. 

From there, he goes to the sea. 

Napoleon's always loved the sea.  That mess in 1722 kept him landlocked for a few decades, but he went back in the 1750s to maraud up and down the Caribbean one last time before the British stamped out piracy for good. 

Something about the smell of the ocean makes him feel younger.  Maybe it's the way the sea never changes. 

He pays a weather-beaten old man named Giles to take him over to Ireland, skirting the Isle of Mann.  The crossing is pleasant enough; Napoleon slides into something like his mother tongue and chats with Giles about the weather, about the price of fish, about Giles' six daughters and one son.  Giles puts him ashore and Napoleon waves at him until the sea carries him away.  Then he sets off up the beach for his homeland. 

He was born in a ramshackle little village, more of a church and a collection of huts than anything, not far from Glenveagh Castle, on the other side of Lough Beagh.  He hasn't been back in more than five hundred years, but he remembers the way, still. 

Napoleon steals a very expensive and very recognizable car in Kilkeel—with considerably less finesse than Gaby—and drives straight through Northern Ireland to the forests and fens of Glenveagh.  He leaves the car in the town proper, makes a fuss at the bar so his face is remembered, and goes down into the woods. 

He waits. 

He doesn't have to wait long, not by his measurements of time anyway.  It's only half a day before he hears someone coming up the trail, low voices muttering in lazy, lisping Spanish. 

Napoleon gets up and shakes a few centuries worth of accumulated stiffness out of his joints. 

" _Hola, mis amigos,_ " he says, and grins.  " _Buscándome_ _?_ "

There are only two men, one lean Cuban and one portly Spaniard, and when they draw on him, Napoleon pulls his own gun first and then there's only one. 

He gets shot again, not badly; the bullet passes through his left arm, a moment of hot pain, and that's that.  He ignores the bleeding and jumps forward, grabbing hold of the Spaniard, knocking his gun away.  

Napoleon's not trained like Illya.  His hand-to-hand combat scores have always been remarkably low.  He's strong, though, and rather uniquely difficult to get away from. 

"Easy, now,” he tells his captive.  _"_ Easy, _relajarte.  Quieres vivir?"_

" _Sí_ _,_ " the man gasps, "s _í, por favor—"_

" _Hablas ingles_?"

" _Sí_."

"Good," says Napoleon, adjusting his grip.  He has the man in a chokehold.  With a little pressure, he could kill him, and the man knows it. 

"What's your name?"

"Arturo," the man says, fear making his voice shake. 

"Well, Arturo.  It's nice to meet you.  I'm Napoleon. Who sent you?  Who do you work for?"

"Marco Batista," Arturo says.  "He—you kill him, _y_ Miguel _dice que_ we do the same to you, for Marco—"

"Do you know Victoria Vinciguerra?  Blonde, tall, beautiful, _como una serpiente venenosa?_ "

" _Sí,_ " Arturo says, and shudders.  "She—she work with Marco, pay him.  She has not been around for months.  Marco _dice que_ she die, _que_ you kill her."

"I did," says Napoleon.  Arturo struggles again but doesn't manage to break Napoelon's grip.  "Did Marco want to kill me and my partners for her, Arturo?"

"Yes, _Señora_ Victoria, she left, eh, _un_ _ultimo_ _deseo,_ you know?  To her _captianes._ Kill Napoleon Solo, _ella dice._ Kill his friends."

" _Hacerlo suffrir,_ " Napoleon finishes.  That damned radio call.  Someone must have been listening—they were using a public frequency, he supposes—and carried her orders off to the underlings.  "Who else is trying to kill me, Arturo?"

Arturo's quiet for a second.  "No one," he hisses.  "We were only ones left, we—"

Napoleon squeezes again, dispassionately.  Arturo gags and splutters, legs kicking.  " _Quién_ _mas,_ Arturo?"

" _Nadie, nadie_ _más, por favor_ , _nadie_ _._ "

Napoleon believes him and lets him up.  "Thanks, Arturo.  I believe you."

Arturo scrambles away, rubbing at his neck, babbling his thanks.  " _Gracias,_ " he wheezes. 

"Oh, don't thank me yet," Napoleon says.  He examines himself.  Aside from the pain in his arm, he doesn't feel anything.  Not a twinge of pity, not a spark of regret. 

"But, _tu dices,_ I _—_ "

"Oh, Arturo," Napoleon says.  " _Yo no dije nada."_

" _Por favor."_ Arturo tries to get away.  Napoleon doesn't let him.  He didn't come to Glenveagh for the scenery.  He has business here. 

"Sorry, Arturo.  _Necesito tu ayuda.  Necesito tu sangre."_

Arturo starts to scream. 

Napoleon might be a selfish lump of stone, but he's not a cruel man.  He knocks Arturo out and lifts up him, throwing him over his shoulder.  He doesn't need to be awake for this. 

Napoleon remembers the way through the woods like he left only yesterday.  The trees are the same, the wind, the wild snarls of fen weed, the pools of cold water. 

It's not a long walk.  He's among the old stones before he knows it. 

When he was a young man, Napoleon could hear these stones singing from a hundred miles away.  They called to him, filled his blood up with desire. 

They're quiet now.  He feels no eyes, hears no whispers.  He can't smell any potions brewing, no freshly-slaughtered animals, no fae rolling around in the grass. 

 _Oh, now you're shy?_ he thinks.  He didn’t want to consider this, earlier in his life.  He’s never wanted to come back here.  He doesn’t want to make his situation worse. 

But he can imagine nothing worse than watching Gaby and Illya die, so.  He’s here, ironically, to beg for his life.

He cuts Arturo's throat without ceremony.  Blood steams over his hands and into the grass, hot and alive. 

The fae don't come out of the woodwork to feast on his offering. 

"Still mad at me?"  Napoleon says in fae-speak, the words rolling over his tongue.  "It's been five hundred years, my friends.  I've paid for my crimes, haven't I?"

The fen is silent. 

"Release me," Napoleon says.  "Let me go.  I've—I've paid enough, haven't I?  Shed enough of my own blood?  Enough of the blood of others?"  He nudges Arturo's body with his toe.  His own blood is tacky on his arm. 

"Do you want their names?"  he demands.  He doesn't want to give up the names—they're _his_ —but he will.  He doesn't have any pride left.  No shame, no sense of humiliation. 

"Laura," he says.  His beautiful wife.  He married her in 1492, the year Columbus discovered the Americas, because he didn't know then the extent of his curse.  "Eddy."  Their son.  Laura had lived to be eighty-two.  Eddy ninety-one.  "Mary."  Napoleon's granddaughter, who died of pox at thirty.  "Tad, Arthur, Matthew."  Mary's boys.  All of them dead in wars.  He'd stopped keeping track of his family after that.  Mary's death had almost killed him.  He'd started to turn to stone when he buried her, he thinks. 

"Betsy," he says, and it scrapes out of his throat, leaves him feeling raw, wounded.  He shouldn't have married again.  He should have known. 

"Jacob.  Pierre."  God, how he'd loved Pierre.  He'd lived a long time too, and Napoleon had buried him in his beloved Paris, visited his grave every decade no matter where he was or whose name he wore. 

"Samir.  Meixiang.  Moses and Eliza."  The fae have always sold their favor for pain.  Napoleon doesn't think about the sadnesses in his life, the griefs; why should he?  He's alive and he can still experience happiness, feel pleasure, so he chases after that at the expense of everything else.  Life is fun, still.  He hates feeling like he's full of corpses. 

"Martinque, Sasha, _please_ —"

The pain starts somewhere deep in his marmoreal chest, crawls down to his shaking hands and into the hollows of his throat.  It takes him a minute to realize that the pain isn't his own; it's from outside of him, digging its way in.  Their names stick in his mouth.

  There are headstones all over the world where Napoleon has buried someone he loved.  He has a graveyard in his skull, and he's _tired._ He's so tired. 

" _Let me go,_ " he says.  "Please let me go."

 _Let me grow old,_ he wants to say.  _Let me watch Illya's hair turn white.  Let me hold Gaby's ancient hands.  Let me die with them.  Don't make me stay, don't make me stone._

His skin hurts.  His veins are on fire.  He can't see, can't hear, can feel his bones down to the individual cell. 

"Please," he says. 

The pain recedes.  The fen comes back. 

Napoleon is empty.  Cautiously, not daring to hope, he cuts open his palm.  Blood rushes up, fills his cupped hand. 

The wound itches, and heals without ceremony.  It doesn't even leave a scar. 

 _A curse is called so for a reason,_ he hears, a whisper on the wind.  The fae are gone, he realizes.  Not even this land is wild enough for them.  They're not here.  The trees are still.  All of the magic is gone. 

He drops his hand.  Something opens like a pit in his chest, yawning and deep and dark. 

" _Fuck,_ " he snarls.  His blood falls to mix with Arturo's in the grass. " _Fuck_ you!"

The trees, as they have been for years, are silent.

* * *

 Illya wakes to find Cowboy gone.  At first he thinks nothing of it—it is not uncommon for Napoleon to have trouble sleeping. 

Then he sits up and realizes that he does not hear his partner anywhere in the house, and jumps to his feet. 

"Illya?"  Gaby murmurs.  "What's wrong?"

"Go back to sleep.  I will check."

Gaby, of course, sits up.  Sleep has ruffled her hair and left creases in the side of her face.  "Where's Napoleon?"

"Do not know," Illya says, grim.  He can't explain it, but a terrible feeling has stolen into his gut. 

Wordlessly, he and Gaby creep out into the house, guns ready, searching for Cowboy. 

They don't find him anywhere, not in either of the studies, not the bathroom, not the kitchen where Illya has grown used to seeing him in a ridiculous apron, barefoot, singing along to the radio. 

It's Gaby who sees the note first, propped up next to a vase of fresh wildflowers. 

"'My darlings,'" Gaby reads.  (Illya can't read Cowboy's handwriting; it's terrible, which amuses both Napoleon and Gaby endlessly.)  A knot of dread, inexplicable, twists in Illya's belly.  "'I hate to admit this, but I lied.  You're not in Silecroft.  I've gone to take care of our little problem, and then on to take care of a few of my own.  I'll see you soon.  Be safe.  Don't try to follow me.'  And then," here Gaby chokes, her eyes wide. "And then he drew a little hat, the _bastard_ —"

Gaby throws the note down and presses her fist, white-knuckled, to her mouth. 

Illya doesn't understand.  "He left us?"  he asks.  "Cowboy left us behind?"

He's not angry, not yet.  He's confused.  "But we are partners, he said—"

"He lied," Gaby says bitterly, and collapses into Illya's arms.  She is not crying, but she shakes wildly.  "He _lied,_ Illya." 

Illya murmurs into her hair, nonsense words, bewilderment turning into anger.  Does Napoleon really think them that incompetent?  Does he still not trust him?  Does he not care that they care about him? 

Illya can still feel Cowboy inside of him.  He still has bruises where he'd dug into Illya's hips.  Illya's clothes have started to smell like his cologne. 

"He left us," Illya says.  A sense of betrayal starts to form. 

Logically, he should not be so surprised.  They are spies, all of them.  They trade in secrets and lies, betrayal, heartbreak.  And Solo has been a spy—has been alive—longer than Illya and Gaby both.  Of course he betrayed them.  It was only a matter of time. 

"We've got to go after him," Gaby says, pulling away.  Her eyes are brimming, but she's not crying.  "We have to find him, he could need our help."

"No," Illya says.  "We stay."

Gaby whirls on him.  "What?"

"We stay," he says again, stronger this time, more sure.  He thought that he'd made his feelings known to Napoleon back in Paris.  He thought that Napoleon had understood.  Either he didn't, which means that nothing Illya says or does for him will ever be understood, or he did understand, which means he left them knowing how much it would hurt. 

"Illya!  We can't!  We—"

"—are staying."  He picks up the note.  The little cowboy hat makes red swim in front of his eyes.  "He says he will come back."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Is his choice.  Nothing will stop him, if he wants to return.  Not bullets or fire or any measure of pain."

"What about Batista's men?"

"What about them?  Cowb— Solo can handle himself.  He is big boy."

"I—"

"This is his mess," Illya snaps, finally pushed to the end of his patience.  "He chose to go, to lie.  This is not me abandoning him, or you abandoning him.  He abandoned _us._ He is on his own.  No reason for us to risk our lives."

"You're acting like a child," Gaby snarls. 

"Me?"  Red flashes.  "I am not one who left his partners in the middle of mission!" 

"You're thinking about it now!"

"Is clear he doesn't want us," Illya spits.  His hands are shaking. 

"Is that what this is about?  You want to leave him because he left first?  He's trying to protect us!"  Gaby starts forward, anger coming up to replace her confusion, her hurt. 

"You are making excuses," Illya growls.  "For a man who left you behind after you promised him you would stay."

Gaby tackles him.  This is not the first time, and it will not be the last.  Illya topples backwards, snarling.  They hit the floor and he rolls them, pining Gaby underneath him.

"Enough," he says.  "Gaby—"

She bites him.  Not hard enough to draw blood, but sharp, painful. 

Illya rears back, surprised.  The red haze clears.  "Ow," he finally says.  "That hurt."

"You're being stubborn," Gaby shoots back, struggling to get out from under him.  "And stupid."

"As are you," Illya says. 

Gaby considers that.  "Look," she says.  "We can't leave him on his own out there.  He's immortal, or whatever, but he could still get hurt."

Illya knows that Gaby is right.  She has good instincts.  Underneath his anger he's—hurt.  Cowboy should have trusted him, like Illya trusts him.  He doesn't care that Napoleon wanted to protect them.  He is part of a team.  Teammates are not left behind.  Illya had come for Cowboy when Rudi lit him up like a firework.  It is what partners do.

It’s what he will do, he realizes.  Illya is not the kind of man who can let his own hurt feelings get in the way of loyalty. 

He lets go of Gaby, rolls so that he's lying beside her on the cool wooden floor, looking up at the rafters.  They lie there together, side by side, for a long while. 

"Two days," Gaby says.  "If he's not back by then, we go after him."

Illya nods, slowly.  "Yes," he says.  "Good idea.  Gives him... time to come back on his own.  Take care of his own business, his way.  Then we go and save him, the ungrateful Ублюдок." 

Gaby reaches out for him, tangles her fingers with his.  "It'll be okay," she says. 

Illya still feels betrayed, hurt.  He's worried, too.  Worried about Cowboy, worried about their partnership, about the way they feel about each other.  He’s been abandoned before. 

But what will happen will happen.  He sighs.  "We will see," he says.  "But when we get him back, I am going to kick his ass."

* * *

 Two days pass and Napoleon doesn't show up.  Gaby's going to kill him.  She's going to skin him alive.  Illya's still withdrawn, gloomy.  He doesn't have any more outbursts, but he's distant and broody. 

Honestly, it's almost a relief to get out of the house and go after their idiot partner.  Illya tracks him down to Silecroft—the real Silecroft, apparently Napoleon lied about that too—and from there, across the sea to Ireland.  They're able to track Napoleon's progress through the countryside, but the trail goes cold in a place called Glenveagh, where a dead man was found with his throat cut in the woods. 

There's no sign of Napoleon, and no sign of where he went next.

Illya smashes their hotel room.  Gaby drinks herself unconscious.  In the morning, lacking anywhere better to go, they return to the cottage. 

Napoleon is not waiting for them.

Waverly is, though. 

"Agent Solo sent me," he says, sounding mildly reproachful, like he can't believe a mere agent had the gall to send him to deliver a message like a schoolboy passing notes.  "He is... on vacation, I believe he said."

"He's alive?"  Gaby is relieved.  She knows Napoleon can't die, technically, but knowing and believing are different things. 

"Yes.  Unharmed, too, though he was in a foul mood.  When he turned up in London I thought one of you must have died, he was so out of sorts." 

"Where?"  Illya demands.  Then, remembering himself, he adds, "Sir."

Waverly smiles.  "He neglected to say.  He said only that he was taking some time off to settle the Vinciguerra affair once and for all."

"And you let him go?"  Gaby asks.  She can get away with disobedience and disrespect.  Waverly likes her, and she thinks that he finds Napoleon amusing.  Poor Illya doesn't get any leeway. (Then again, Illya never steps a foot out of line, and so is usually the only one rewarded with tea whenever the three of them are in for a briefing.)

"When Marco Batista caught up with you in Paris, he shot at three of my agents, caused several thousand pounds in property damage to a beloved national monument, and sparked a mild international incident.  Agent Solo was very adamant that he go off on his own.  If he wants to handle this on his terms, I am inclined to let him.  I can wash my hands of it, should anything go wrong."

"When's he coming back?"  Gaby asks.  

Waverly gives Gaby a long, thoughtful look.  Pity, she realizes.  He’s looking at her with pity.  "Frankly, Agent Teller," he says, "I'd be rather surprised if we ever see him again."

After that, things change.  Waverly gives them a week, which they spend in Napoleon's cottage.  They share a bed in a different room and make love like they're in mourning, chaste, perfunctory.  Gaby loved Illya before she loved Napoleon, and she loves him now, after. 

Illya tells her, tracing the shell of her ear, that he feels much the same. 

Together, they shift through both of the studies, learning more and more about their missing lover.  At first it's out of revenge; Gaby wants to strip Napoleon of all his secrets.  She wants to leave him as bare and exposed as he's left her, caught unaware by how much she _cares_ about him, how much his leaving cuts. 

Later, it becomes something like a conversation. 

Napoleon bought this cabin in 1872, under the name Jacob Tallsend.  He left it to a man named Pete Howard in 1901, who owned it until 1937.  Now it's owned by an American man named Edmund Tallow; there are no pictures of Edmund, but Napoleon stares up at Gaby under the name Peter, a pretty woman slung under one of his arms, his hair cut short, his eyes flat. 

"Cowboy used to have long hair," Illya says, showing her a painting dated back to 1719.  Napoleon's hair, wildly curly, brushes his shoulders and frames his face.  In the painting, he's wearing a sardonic expression, so familiar it makes Gaby smile. 

After, they go back to London.  Waverly puts them on desk duty for a time.  He's testing them, Gaby thinks.  He wants to see if they're still able to work together. 

She and Illya go to the Museum of Natural History and make love in their flat overlooking the dark stretch of the Thames.  Winter comes and Gaby pelts Illya with snowballs. 

Illya wins _that_ war when they're sent to Sao Palo, their first mission without Napoleon.  After they catch an international arms dealer and former Nazi general, Illya throws her into a pool. 

They're not the same without Napoleon, but they find something like a dance again anyway. 

Then, in Hong Kong, after stealing nuclear codes from radical separatist terrorists, Gaby gets a postcard. 

It's of a bland villa somewhere in coastal France.  It's not signed, and there's nothing but Gaby's name scrawled across the back in untidy handwriting. 

Gaby, sensing more than knowing, does not show Illya. 

The next postcard comes from Wyoming, a picture of a cowboy sitting on a horse.  Gaby smiles.

The next one comes from Spain.  Then Bangladesh.  The next from Rio, then Minsk, and Kyoto, and finally old Paris, the Arc du Triomphe, a sketch of Van Gogh's _Sunflowers_ drawn painstakingly in black pen on the back. 

"We should take vacation," Illya says, when the spring has begun to turn to summer.  He has a new scar on his chin that Gaby likes to kiss.  She has one on her thigh that Illya never touches. 

Gaby grins.  "How about New York?" 

They skip out on Waverly—Gaby, trusting his indulgence, leaves a cheerful note—and take a flight from Lisbon to America. 

"How long do we wait?" Illya asks.  Gaby loves the crooked smile on his face.  He's never found her stash of postcards, but he's clever, her Illya, and he's missing Napoleon too.  (She doesn’t know if he’s forgiven Napoleon, or when.  Gaby doesn't know when she herself forgave him.  Sometime in the spring, maybe, in Venice, standing in the drowned plazas, the statues half-submerged, the pigeons roosting.  She can't imagine what it's like to be five hundred years old.  To lose everyone you love because your heart won't give out, your lungs keep pulling in air.

She thinks, that if she were in Napoleon’s shoes, she would run too.) 

"A few days," Gaby says.  He'll come or he won’t.  "No more."

They go see all of the sights, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building.  Gaby buys Illya an obnoxiously tacky t-shirt, which he wears out of spite, and they mostly keep themselves from fucking in public places. 

Then, one night, Gaby wakes to find someone slipping into bed with them.  Illya stirs, snuffles, and rolls over. 

"What if I’d stabbed you, mm?"  Gaby murmurs. 

Napoleon smiles into the curve of her neck.  "I would have managed, I'm sure."

He fits against her perfectly.  He's lost some weight, she thinks, but then she has too.  "I'm sure you would have," she whispers.  She turns to kiss him, softly.  "Illya's going to kick your ass, you know.  _I'm_ going to kick your ass."

"Ooh, Miss Teller," he says, kissing her shoulder like he's praying, the knobs of her spine, the base of her skull.  "You deviant."

"Hush," says Gaby.  She doesn't want to scare him off.  "I missed you."

"I did too," he admits, quietly.  "More than I thought I would, actually.  It was a... novel experience." 

She arches an eyebrow.  "Should I be offended, Mister Solo?"

"You, my dear?  Never."

They're quiet for a moment, legs tangled.  Gaby should ask him how he got in here.  She should wake Illya—who only sleeps this deeply when he feels completely safe—so he can greet Napoleon himself.

Instead, she takes her head under Napoleon's chin and draws one of his hands up into both of hers.  She always expects his hands to be soft, but they're not.  He has gun callouses, tiny old scars that must be from before his curse, imperfections, like cracks in the statues of Paris. 

"Are you staying?"  she asks. 

"Yes," says Napoleon softly.  "I can't stay away." 

"For how long?"  A trickier question altogether.  She half expects him not to answer. 

He does, though.  Gaby feels it vibrate in his throat.  "As long as I can," he says.  "I don't think I'll be able to watch you die, but I'll stay as long as I can."

Gaby nods.  "Okay," she says.  She smiles.  It's good to have him back. 

"Why are you so happy, mm?"  Napoleon shifts, arranges them so they're comfortable, pressed together from head to knee.  

"No reason," Gaby whispers, leaning up to kiss him again.  Illya grumbles in his sleep and slings an arm over both of them.  "Your hands are warm."

"They are?" says Napoleon, pressing his lips against her forehead, her nose, her eyelids.  He curls his free hand around her hip, where it burns through Illya's big t-shirt to warm her skin.  "Huh.  That's new.  Wanna see if anything else if different?"

“You’re terrible,” Gaby says, swatting him across the nose. 

Napoleon grins in the dark.  “Is that a no?” 

“No,” Gaby huffs, “it’s not a no,” and when he flips them so that Gaby’s on top, legs curling around his waist, she only kisses him back and follows him down. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To live in this world

you must be able  
to do three things:  
to love what is mortal;  
to hold it

against your bones knowing  
your own life depends on it;  
and, when the time comes to let it go,  
to let it go.

"in blackwater woods," mary oliver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @panarcher.tumblr.com i'm still so emotional about spies.

**Author's Note:**

> @panarcher.tumblr.com come holler at me to finish all of these fucking projects


End file.
